No matter how you spell it, consider the word turnkey to be like the color red, growling, loud and sudden noises, a sudden increase in an animal’s perceived height: DANGER!

I am old enough to remember when developing websites was still a mystery to a whole lot of people. I literally had a client who wanted a change on his web site and when it did not happen quickly enough he angrily demanded that I send him the Word document and he would make the change himself. Back then (20-25 years ago) it was only natural for tech businesses to try to offer simplicity. They wanted things to seem less scary. Literally, large amounts of money were less scary to a lot of business people than someone explaining that making a good and functional web site would require understanding your unique business and tailoring it to what you needed. Businesses just wanted to sell stuff online or make sure their customers could get ahold of them quickly.

To answer this call, LOTS of places started suing terms like turnkey. The idea was to tell clients if you just paid us money (put in the key and turn it), you would have this mysterious technology available to you adding value 24/7 and you wouldn’t have to think about it.

These were all lies. It’s very simple. Think of things far more simple than web sites and web applications like shoes. How difficult does it need to be to buy shoes? I mean, most people wear them. We can identify them at an early age. Just fill out simple questionnaire and we’re done? I doubt seriously any American paying money for shoes would be OK with sending money for shoes if the all they knew about them were the size, color and style. Not even pictures. It’s the same with technology and “turnkey”. There is no such thing. You get what you pay for.

Does that mean everyone needs to pay for 12 full-time developers to have a good web site? No. But whenever I see the term “turnkey” in relationship to technology, I know as a developer that it’s a lie. I’m usually on the dump end of getting things done. And far too often, I find myself explaining to decision-makers the very practical reasons whatever they bought will not be in up a week they were told it would. Or why they now need to spend more money and time t make something work. This ALMOST ALWAYS falls into the sunk-cost fallacy trap and years go into trying to lift up a badly made decision about something that was supposed to be “turnkey.”